PASADENA – Rumors of school walkouts throughout the Southland last Thursday provided a real-time backdrop for educators gathered in Pasadena to discuss where students’ rights begin – and where they end.

While few students in Los Angeles County actually made it out the doors to protest the nation’s military presence in Iraq with the “World Can’t Wait” organization, the threat, along with memories of large-scale walkouts earlier this year, prompted educators to examine both their obligation to keep students safe and their legal duty to avoid treading on their charges’ freedom of expression.

“It’s a balancing act – maintaining the instructional program while supporting the First Amendment,” Los Angeles Unified School District legal counsel Kelly Barnes told a room of school administrators gathered at the Lake Avenue Church for LAUSD’s first Landmark Educational Law Conference.

Knowing a school’s boundaries is made more complex by the fact K-12 students in California public schools have more First Amendment rights than almost all students elsewhere in the country, she said. While the federal government provides a minimum threshold for free speech in classrooms, California enhances rights allowing students to express themselves through clothing, speech, writing and on-campus demonstrations between classes.

Still, administrators are under no obligation to allow students to leave for off-campus protests during school hours, as many did during the string of large-scale undocumented-immigrants rights rallies earlier this year, said Jeri Durham, the LAUSD lawyer.

“You can simply lock the gates and say `no you can’t go,”‘ she said.

But when a mob is forming and there is a chance students will crush each other or incite violence, it’s time to reexamine the policy, she said.

In LAUSD, administrators are allowed to unlock gates when keeping kids on campus is creating a safety hazard.

“If you have 300 students and they’re charging the gates, its time to let them go,” she said.

A school’s responsibility to students after the gates have been opened was also a hot topic for discussion.

Barnes said controversial actions among L.A. County school districts, including sending faculty members with students or having buses pick them up after rallies, did not mean administrators were approving of student actions.

“Basically, these are our kids and we are going to try and keep them as safe as we can,” she said.

But when a teacher crosses the line between monitor to active participant or advocate, it’s breaking the rules and jobs could be on the line.

“When you’re on duty, you have `government’ stamped across your forehead,” she said.